Exploring Expressionism

In this course, we will explore Expressionism, an art movement that emerged in the early twentieth century, primarily in Germany and France, and had its roots in the nineteenth-century movements of Romanticism and Symbolism.  Focusing mainly on painting, we will consider how Expressionist works typically reveal a turning inward and an emphasis on emotion, as well as spirituality (often a vague notion of “the spiritual”).  Our exploration will begin with the movement’s origins in pre-World War I Europe, look at the uniquely American post-World War II movement of Abstract Expressionism, and end with the emergence (in both Europe and the United States) of Neo-Expressionism in the 1980s